Scott Free: The secrets to getting along in retirement? Ask my wife!

{child_flags:hot}The secrets to getting along in retirement? Ask my wife! {child_byline}Scott Pederson{/child_byline} There's not a lot that's challenging about being retired. When I was getting ready to make the transition, following my siblings who had done so years earlier, my older sister chuckled that I was so nervous about it. "It's not a hard transition," she said in her big-sister voice. But there is an art form, dance steps, per se, to keep from stepping on each other's feet when you and your spouse are both retired. In the old realm, Nancy ruled the domicile. She retired before I did, and that solidified her role as queen of the palace, if you consider our cracker box a palace. With a few notable exceptions, our home was her domain, and I was just an occasional visitor, an interloper, who by virtue of our marriage and my wife's good graces, was allowed to live there. I know some couples that solve the conflict in other ways. In some cases, one or both of them escape to the golf course to keep their distance. Others make the garage or workshop the refuge. Still others go back to work again or start a new career. Although it has not always been smooth, we’ve found a way to make it work together. I thought it would be important to have working TVs in three separate rooms so we could each watch what we wanted. But we have both learned to like each other's interests enough to make it work. She's become more of a Bucks fan. I have come to appreciate "Call the Midwives," which she was sure I would loathe. She was teaching me how to fold hospital corners so I could make the bed in the morning. I was showing her how to be smarter with our smart-television remote. Sometimes the partnership goes well, like when we had to reorganize the garage after buying a bigger car. Sometimes they don't, like when I try to get her to appreciate the finer points of good bourbon, and she says, after every single sample: "It tastes like firewater. How can you drink that stuff?" On other occasions, we both learn things. During Brewer games, I have been educating her on the new rules like the pitch clock. Likewise, we both rode the train to the Art Institute of Chicago last week, and I learned the difference between Manet, Monet and mayonnaise. ( I don't want to spread the wrong impressionism, but the latter is my choice to go with a sandwich in the museum restaurant.) Often the hardest thing to cope with is our differing styles. She thrives on multitasking. I like to make surgical strikes, do something and then move on. So now that we are both home, those two styles can get into trouble. When a magazine comes, Nancy likes to ruminate on it. She routinely sets aside a brochure, book or magazine to get to it at a later time. It's like she soothes her conscience by promising to give it a fuller reading later. Me? I read or skim it and move it to recycling. Stay on it or move on. I pored over the owner's manual on our car from cover to cover — a tedious read by any standard — and she set it aside to get to it later. After it sat on the coffee table for over a month untouched, I volunteered to put it in the glove box and absolve her of further guilt. She conceded, but required me to put it in the "glove compartment" instead. It's this little needling of each other that either keeps us on our toes or drives each other mad. Is it this little skirmishing that make married couple live longer? At least our kids are not around to remind us we are both wrong: "Nobody puts gloves in the box or compartment, so why do you keep calling it that?" Retirement is like marriage or parenthood. It takes a lot of compromise, but if you have the right partner, you can always make it work. Isn't that right, Dear? Dear?! Dear, are you even listening to me?

There's not a lot that's challenging about being retired. When I was getting ready to make the transition, following my siblings who had done so years earlier, my older sister chuckled that I was so nervous about it.

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The collapse of an Iowa apartment building last month isn't the first time such an event has been followed with questions about whether more could have been done to protect lives. It needs to be the last.

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